Queensland audiometrist MIKE CARTER, 73, is reluctantly retiring after devoting nearly five decades to
changing lives through hearing care. His story provides a fascinating glimpse of the industry in Australia and New Zealand throughout his time.
Mr Mike Carter’s 48–year career in hearing care has at times been a rollercoaster. He has ridden the highs and lows, including being a victim of a crime that saw him lose everything, only to start again and rebuild in another country.
Through it all Mike’s commitment to provide the best hearing care possible, to thousands of patients, has never wavered.
Mike’s Dad, Rex Carter joined the industry in New Zealand in its pioneering stages.
“He invented a couple of the big old body hearing aids – pocket talkers – which I still have,” Mike recalls. “He designed them for British Hearing Aids but didn’t get any money out of it – that wasn’t a thing in those days.
“A lot of people didn’t know that because Dad was a quiet achiever, working in the background. He had his own clinic and helped set up some of the hospital clinics in New Zealand in the early days “
As a young man, Mike moved to Sydney and worked as a troubleshooter for a Japanese company Koyo, earning about $50,000 annually – a lot of money in those days, he says.
“Dad called me 48 years ago when I was 25 and asked me to come home to work with him for about $300 a week,” he says. “I did because I thought it would be more fulfilling and less stressful.
“We started Gemini Hearing and exclusively did home visits around Auckland doing hearing aid fittings. We would test the clients and come back and make the hearing aids in our own factory; they were all custom made back then.”
Changes in technology have been nothing short of amazing, he adds.
“We used to walk around with a screwdriver to adjust hearing aids but now you need a laptop and (internet/phone) connections,” he says.
“Dad made a hearing aid that was skin colour to blend in with the ear and it had two little gold pins on it. To adjust the volume, wearers would remove the pins, wet their finger and touch it.
“Nowadays, you’re wearing computers. I have high frequency hearing loss from noise exposure at work, since we had no hearing protection in those days, and I wear hearing aids. Manufacturers I deal with allow me to ‘trial’ the latest hearing technology so I can give feedback to them.”
NZ chain of clinics
After working with his father for a few years, Mike ventured out on his own and set up his own audiology business. Over many years of hard work, one clinic expanded to 26 across New Zealand in Auckland, other parts of the North Island, and Christchurch.
“We were one of the first chains of hearing aid clinics in New Zealand,” he says. “We employed audiologists and set up clinics in shopping centres and doctors’ rooms. Some in the industry knocked us because they said we were treating it as retail but now everybody does or at least has a major retail component.”
Mike has travelled the world with the industry. “The manufacturers we were dealing with in the early days regularly flew me to the US and Singapore. I gained a wealth of knowledge from these trips,” he adds.
Business was good but a significant setback occurred when Mike contracted hepatitis in Mexico and was off work for 12 months.
Unfortunately, the company’s finances were left to his accountant.
“The accountant he had employed ripped him off, leading to the loss of the business,” his second wife Trish adds. “The accountant was eventually jailed but Mike lost everything.”
Mike and his family – first wife Becky and two children – migrated to Australia to start again.
He opened one store, Carter Hearing, in Wynnum, Queensland.
Unfortunately, Becky died soon afterwards, and he faced another challenge – raising his children as a single father while trying to rebuild his business.
Again, he triumphed over adversity and Carter Hearing grew to include six permanent clinics. One opened in a shopping centre in Broadbeach and is still operating.
“We were the first to have a retail outlet in a shopping centre in Queensland and were trailblazers,” Mike says.
He later married Trish, who had a nursing background, and she joined him in the business. Carter Hearing later incorporated partners to grow the business to 13 clinics in both New South Wales and Queensland under the names Carter Hearing and Allied Hearing.
In 2014 Mike, Trish and partners sold Carter Hearing and Allied Hearing to Hearing Life after being approached with a good offer.
Mike and Trish later formed Total Hearing which has three permanent sites in Brisbane and near Sydney.
The hearing industry connection has continued through three generations as the couple’s daughters, Ms Amy Green, who works in one of the Brisbane clinics, and Ms Kate Robertson, who now works for another independent audiology practice outside Melbourne, are both audiometrists. They have worked in the industry for more than 18 years.
Lessons from patients
One day a patient in his mid-60s who was also from New Zealand came into Total Hearing in Brisbnane and for some reason Mike decided to show him a photo of his father. “The patient said, ‘I know him’ and it turns out Dad fitted his hearing aids when he was a child,” Mike recalls. “He was fitted quite young and still remembered him.
“The amazing thing was this man happened to randomly come into our clinic and had a consultation with my daughter Amy, the grand-daughter of Rex, his original practitioner.”
Apart from helping thousands of patients over decades and teaching them much about hearing care, Mike reflects on the importance of listening to patients and learning from their experiences. Over the years he has followed the advice of several clients including one who advised to dress casually to make patients feel more comfortable.
“In those days we wore suits, and I was called to a shop for a hearing aid fitting in New Zealand for a client called Lady Wattie,” he recalls. “I went in and one woman was wearing gumboots and the other was dressed like the Queen. I approached the one dressed like the Queen and inquired, ‘Lady Wattie?’
“She said ‘no’, so I went to the one in gumboots who told me later as I got to know her, ‘Don’t wear a suit to work because if you wear smart casual clothes instead people will feel you’re on the same level,’ and I’ve never worn a suit to work in the 40 years since.”
Another lesson, learnt in America , was to never put a desk between patient and practitioner.
“Don’t put the desk in front of you, put the desk against a wall and the person beside you so you haven’t got a barrier on the journey. You do the hearing aid journey together,” Mike explains.
Trish says her husband is incredibly service orientated. “We’ve always run our businesses with that in mind from the front desk right through. Leading from Mike, there’s no one person more important than the next.”
Mike also emphasises the importance of client relationships and business acumen. “I say to clients, when I’m selling hearing aids, I have to be a good salesman because I’m selling you something you don’t want. I also put one hand up in the air and the other down below and say we meet in the middle.”
His father was still selling hearing aids while aged in his 80s, highlighting his dedication to the profession. Before he died at 85, he was even trying to sell hearing aids to a man in hospital in the opposite bed, Trish recalls.
While Trish, Total Hearing’s operations manager, and Mike are in the process of selling their last business so they can retire, his retirement plans are different from his father’s. He plans to spend more time volunteering with the RSPCA and driving its local wildlife ambulance.
Some voluntary hearing care work may also be on the cards as many years ago he flew fortnightly to Fiji from New Zealand to work with an ENT surgeon in a medical centre.
Mentoring is another possibility. “There’s many new startups now and Mike and I were saying the other day it’s almost a tragedy that there’s so much knowledge between the two of us that’s not being shared; we could help people,” Trish says. “Mike knows how to win and lose, and that’s invaluable.”
